"Policy undergirds everything. It is the foundation upon which everything else comes. The direct service that we and your fellow classmates are doing is a result of some policy somewhere… Because money is policy, budgets are policy. Policy and advocacy is about shaping how the money gets spent… For me its counter to “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” - yes, the effort you put in matters, AND the policy and structure that permits you do those things matter - and you have people around you that support you, so you never do anything by yourself. You have people who help you and support you and then you have the policy that gives us the means to do what we do. So the first thing is that policy undergirds everything.

The second important thing is that everyone can do it. Everyone can do it and it's so important for healthcare providers like you and your classmates to do it because you are respected citizens with a good amount of credibility so I think it's really important to use our voices and that power for good. Everyone can do this, and certainly, you will do it on a regular basis; providers advocate for kids and adults, maybe for a group in your practice, and you can also be on a board like at Children First to help advance policy at a system level. We always have healthcare providers on our board because health is a huge part of what we do here so we need experts. So, you can do it - you can do advocacy and we need you to do the advocacy, whatever your passion is, a healthcare issue, an age group, animals - I think its an important way we make our democracy work, by actively working to maintain it. I know we get downtrodden, thinking “nobody cares, this won’t matter” - it does and it does and it does, over and over again."

"I got into it while I was in undergrad. I got involved in community service and liked it and liked the other students who were doing it and that’s how I got exposed to making bigger change and system change. I became interested in the impact of housing on our health, and in my senior year of nursing school, I did my capstone project on that very topic. I ended up doing a rotation at a homeless shelter and a work study with the head of nursing school center for policy so I took her classes and thought “this changing the world stuff - that’s cool!”. So my senior year, I helped create a non-profit called “Empty the shelters” and the idea was shelters were just temporary and we needed affordable, decent housing. I almost missed taking my nursing board exams because I was so invested in this project, I forgot it was coming up! After graduation, I worked as a nurse for 10 years and just thought people come in here for the same things, diabetes way too young, kids dying from gun violence too young - I thought I want to help prevent stuff like this from happening and that’s when I went back to school for a public health degree."

"It’s gonna be cliche, but this picture right here, this was a big win. This is the end of the city council session when our lead bill was unanimously passed. This is a picture from the end of that session, this is the council woman who sponsored the bill… the director at the time… this was 8 years in the making. One of my favorites though was seeing the mayor sit and sign the bill into law. Again, it’s cliche, but yeah that was awesome. I’m a visual person, and even with DREAM care, we’ve been working on it for 7 years and I visualize that day, that moment when we hear back - “the legislator put the money in!” and I visualize it over and over again, like the end game - and y’know, again, cliche, but I see the kids. I really see the kids behind [the policies]. That is what keeps me going."